Moments
by dancinginthesunlight
Summary: /"Are you lost or something?" she asks. "Last I checked, this was a girl's bathroom." There really is no dignified response to that, so Draco stands silently and hopes that a glare will suffice./ DracoxAstoria


_For the _**Some Things Are Better Left Incomplete **_competition on HPFC; a one-shot that got out of hand. _

**Disclaimer**: _I own nothing._

**Warnings**: _Underage drinking, swearing, hormones, angst_

**Prompt**: _She examined the cut with __

**June**

He is marched in by his aunt and can't help but notice that his mother is conspicuously absent. Figures. The day he and the rest of his family have been anticipating with a sort of nervous excitement for the past year and his own mother refuses to be present. She likewise refused to let them perform the ceremony in Malfoy Manor, insisting that it was improper to make use of the manor without Lucius present.

Draco has a nagging suspicion that is not the real reason.

Aunt Bellatrix stops just outside the door to her parlor, her hand on his shoulder enough to stop his momentum, even though he is taller and stronger than she is.

"This is not your personal moment of glory," she warns, her voice a low hiss that reminds Draco of the snippets of parseltongue he's heard and can't for the life of him understand.

"Yes, Aunt Bella," he replies, because it's expected of him.

He wonders if it will hurt. He overheard from the Gryffindor Dean Thomas, that the Muggle kind involve needles.

"It's not something to brag about with your schoolmates," Bellatrix continues. "You are here to replace your father" – her expression says exactly what she thinks of Lucius's incarceration – "and nothing more. So _don't_ for one second think that this gives you any sort of special status with the Dark Lord."

"I understand." Although it would be one hell of a fact to hold over his friends' heads later: _I was the first one to turn to support the Dark Lord, and I was still underage when I did it_. The thought of his age reminds him to check his watch, but it's only a quarter till midnight. There is still time.

Her speech finished, Bellatrix's expression softens and she pulls him in for a hug, as though he's a child again. When he was younger, he would ask her to tell him stories of the Dark Lord (_Voldemort_, he would sometimes say in his more daring moments, although never in front of Bellatrix; she was touchy about it). Unlike his parents, Aunt Bellatrix never held back any of the more gruesome details.

Of course, she'd also hypothesized that Harry Potter was a dark wizard himself, which, knowing what he does now, was the biggest load of crap he's ever heard.

The moment of tenderness complete, Aunt Bellatrix leads him into the parlor. It's decorated ornately with a wealth of dark and cursed objects.

"I've been waiting for this moment a long time," she confides in him, before drawing back her sleeve and pressing a finger gently against her dark mark.

The Dark Lord arrives at once. He nods curtly at Draco (_don't flinch, don't flinch, don't flinch_) before turning to Bellatrix.

"Shall we?"

The next few moments pass quickly: Draco is ushered into a chair, the Dark Lord is saying something but Draco is concentrating too hard on _not flinching_ and trying to use Occlumency so the Dark Lord won't _know_ he's trying not to flinch that he misses most of the words.

And then Bellatrix offers her wand to the Dark Lord (because of course he wouldn't have his own, Draco realizes) and it's tip is being pressed against his left forearm.

The spell is too long and complicated for Draco to remember. Then the wand erupts with a greenish glow and his whole arm feels like it's on fire.

It. Fucking. Hurts.

Draco grits his teeth (he will _not_ show weakness in front of the Dark Lord), but his every reflex is telling him to scream, to cry, to punch the Dark Lord, to make the pain _stop_.

He is willing to bet every last galleon he owns that this tattoo hurts more than the Muggle kind.

Eventually the pain subsides. Bellatrix looks pleased that he restrained himself. The Dark Lord doesn't look much different than any other of the handful of times Draco has seen him. The Dark Lord and Bellatrix exchange pleasantries.

Then he turns to Draco.

"Welcome."

And it's over.

Draco checks his watch: midnight.

_Happy birthday to me_.

He's sixteen.

His arm still burns. The Dark Lord Disapparates.

Draco passes out.

**September**

Draco always finds the journey between Apparatingto King's Cross Station and pushing through the barrier to Platform 9 ¾ strange. His mother is indifferent to it; his father would scoff at the notion, but Draco found it interesting that for someone with so much status in the Wizarding world, he is relatively clueless when it comes to Muggles.

He knows most other students dress in Muggle clothing for the journey through the station, but given that his father would never stand for such clothing to be in the house, let alone for his son to wear them in public, he and his mother attract quite a few stares and pointed fingers from passersby. He pulls his robes tighter around him, feeling self-conscious for perhaps the first time in his life.

Once they are on the platform, Narcissa turns to Draco and looks as though she's about to burst into tears. He thinks back to his birthday in June, when he returned home from Aunt Bella's with a tattoo and a scrape (from hitting his head as he fainted). Narcissa had been overly concerned about the scrape. She examined the cut with an unnecessary amount of intensity, seeing as it took her all of two seconds to cast a healing charm on it.

But it had been nice to know that someone had cared.

He boards the train and is making the way down the aisle, searching for Theodore Nott (or Crabbe and Goyle at the very least, though he would prefer someone with an intelligence level above that of a troll), when he finds the way blocked by two figures.

The first is Cormac McLaggen, a tall, stocky Gryffindor who had failed to make the Quidditch team three years running. Last year, McLaggen had attempted to earn his way into Umbridge's good graces by pretending to know information about Potter's stupid Dumbledore's Army club, though when called upon all he was able to provide was that the club possibly existed and Potter and Weasley were likely involved. Even Umbridge had scoffed at him.

The second is a small, dark-haired girl who seems vaguely familiar. She isn't in his year, he's pretty sure, but she might be in the year below, and Draco thinks he might have seen her at family affairs and the like. She is reaching up for her wand, which McLaggen has clutched in his hand, towering tauntingly just out of her reach.

Because McLaggen's a prat, Draco _Accio_-s the girl's wand, catches it deftly (he's not a Seeker for nothing) and turns it over to the girl.

She tries to thank him – she's a Slytherin, he can tell from her robes – but he ignores her and pushes his way past. McLaggen may be a right pain in the arse sometimes, but Draco shouldn't have helped the girl out. If he's meant to commit a murder in the coming months, he can't very well be making new friends.

No, he needs to alienate anyone who may figure him out. He'll stay away from Nott, and perhaps Zabini too. He has a few Ravenclaw friends (acquaintances, really, he wouldn't go so far as to call the friends) that he'll try to avoid.

He finally reaches a compartment containing Crabbe, Goyle, and a few others.

Draco very deliberately sits next to Pansy Parkinson, and when she practically pushes his head into her lap, he lets her.

**October**

He's never given much thought to Katie Bell, so when Pansy mentions (with glee) that the Gryffindor's in the hospital wing, he dismisses it as irrelevant. It is only later, as the details emerge (_In Hogsmeade, I heard; yes, an Opal necklace, that's right_) that he realizes the full context of her hospitalization.

This is the first night that he finds himself crying in the girls' bathroom; the only place he knows no one will find him. He should probably thank Moaning Myrtle.

**December**

Snape has the nerve to ask to help Draco, but doesn't he see? The Dark Lord has plenty of Death Eaters (of age) who would be more than willing to finish off Dumbledore. The only fathomable reason Draco has been selected for the task is that the Dark Lord is angry with his father for his botch-up at the Department of Mysteries.

Snape completing the task for him will achieve nothing, and besides, if all goes well Dumbledore will receive the poisoned wine and it will all be over by Christmas.

Draco storms off from the meeting in anger. He used to be good at keeping his emotions in check; now he is finding it harder and harder to keep his composure.

He doesn't need to whine to Myrtle right now, what he needs is a bloody self-pity party, so he makes his way back to the Slytherin common room and helps himself to Zabini's heavy stash of firewhiskey (with the holiday season, he'd never notice one extra bottle missing) and carries it down to the common room.

Draco knows he can't wallow here; a few second years huddled in the corner are already giving him strange looks, so he makes his way to the library (because it's a Friday night and no one in their right minds will be here), nods at Madam Pince, and finds an isolated desk in the back corner near the restricted section.

He's a quarter-way through the bottle when he hears a rustling sound from nearby. He turns to face the noise but the library suddenly erupts in a whirl of colors and he needs to stop moving because the alcohol is rushing to his head too fast.

"Who's there?" he hears himself say, pleased that the words aren't _too_ slurred, although at present he wouldn't count on his ability to hold a wand steady if it comes to that.

"Shhh!" comes the response, coupled with the appearance of a girl: dark hair, bright blue eyes, robes drawn, wand raised. He's seen her before. "Do you want to get us both in trouble?"

He doesn't say anything.

"Classy, that," the girl nods at the firewhiskey.

"Shut it," he mumbles. He doesn't need some girl telling him off for drinking underage (and on school grounds).

She ignores him and makes her way past him into the restricted section and emerges a few moments later with a leather-bound book clutched in her small hands.

His expression must give him away, because she rolls her eyes at him and admits, "Yeah, I know. You'd think they'd enchant the restricted section so you couldn't just walk in there and take whatever you need."

"Which is?" If it weren't for the alcohol, he would not have engaged himself in this conversation. What happened to not making new friends?"

"None of your business," she says, tucking the book into her bag so he can't read the title. A pause, then, "I never properly thanked you, by the way. That was you on the train, with McLaggen, yeah?"

He remembers it vaguely; the prat had her wand or something.

He knew he shouldn't have been nice to her.

"Well, anyway," the girl says, "I'm Astoria."

"Draco," he says, and blames the alcohol again.

"I know," she says, then seems to realize what she's admitted. "I'm not stalking you, I swear. My sister Daphne's in your year."

"Greengrass?"

Astoria nods. Then she reaches over to grab the firewhiskey and takes a swig straight from the bottle. She sets it back down with a thud.

"Right. See you."

She leaves, skirt swaying around her hips (and if Draco didn't have a vow not to get close to anyone this year, he might have wondered how someone so small had such disproportionately long legs), stopping to grab a book off a random shelf to have Madam Pince check out for her.

Draco returns to the bottle. He's sure that he'll have a killer hangover in the morning, but for now he needs the alcohol to make his life less bloody confusing.

"Cheers," he whispers.

**March**

Myrtle's not in her bathroom, thank Merlin. It's easier to try to stop his tears when he doesn't have to listen to her sobbing in the corner. Draco grips the edges of the sink tightly and forces himself to take deep, even breaths.

He hears the door swing open behind him and whirls around, wand drawn.

It's Astoria.

The girl holds her hands up in a mock-surrender. He lowers his wand a few centimeters.

"Are you lost or something?" she asks. "Last I checked, this was a girl's bathroom."

There really is no dignified response to that, so Draco stands silently and hopes that a glare will suffice.

Astoria takes two steps closer to him, looking at him with disbelief. "Have you been crying?"

A beat. "What's it to you?"

"You don't look well, you know."

"I haven't been—" he starts, but Astoria interrupts.

"No, it's not just the crying," she says, ignoring Draco when he tries to deny it. "You're thinner and you look… tired, like."

He _is _tired, but he doesn't need her to assess his psychological condition, so he tries to glare again.

"You do know that these are all out-of-order," he gestures to the row of toilets.

"'Course I do. Myrtle's always flooding them," Astoria rolls her eyes. "But for whatever reason they keep refilling _this_" – she gestures to an off-white box hanging from the wall in the corner – "even though it's been broken since my third year."

Draco isn't sure what the box is, but he doesn't want to look stupid, so he changes the subject, "Aren't you supposed to be in class right now?" He has the period free, but Astoria's only a fourth year.

"Yeah, but Eloise Midgen is having an emergency and McGonagall sent me to deal with it."

Then she strides over to the box, slams her fist against it three times, and catches the object that falls out.

It's a tampon. A (Draco searches for a replacement adjective for 'bloody') goddamn tampon.

Now that he thinks about it, he's not sure what else he expected to be kept in a box on the wall of the girls' bathroom.

He stammers something intelligent along the lines of, "Er… uh…"

Another eye-roll from Astoria. "You are such a typical guy." She pauses, then adds, "Would've been funnier if Eloise'd bled through in Defense. I'd love to see Snape try to handle it."

She smiles at the thought.

And then somehow Draco is laughing with her, because the image of Snape dealing with _girl issues_ is pretty damn funny.

It's the first time he's laughed in a while.

**May**

Astoria visits him in the hospital wing.

It's mid-afternoon on a Saturday and he's already made it halfway through the bag of sweets his mother sent in.

"Hufflepuff's destroying us," she says, sitting down on the corner of his bed without being asked.

"Fuck."

"My thoughts exactly. They pulled in some fifth year to replace you. Harper or something. He's a horrible Seeker. Snitch was right in front of his face and he missed it."

"The match's still going, then?"

She nods. "So why exactly are you in here?"

"Potter."

"What'd the prat do now?"

"Bloody attacked me. I nearly bled to death."

"And what a tragedy that would've been," Astoria says, her tone light, joking. "Slytherin house forced to watch Harper lose Quidditch matches for us for the next two years."

Over the past few months their relationship has somehow gone from mere acquaintances to what could be described as a friendship. Draco isn't sure how he feels about that.

"Do you really think it would be such a tragedy if I died?" he doesn't mean to say it out loud, but the words slip out. "I mean," he recovers, "half the school hates me."

"Because they think your father's secretly in league with You-Know-Who and you can't wait to join up," she says. "But since the rest of us are sane enough to realize that you're underage and obviously not a Death Eater, yes, I think people would regard it as a tragedy."

Her words are ironic, but Draco is willing to overlook it, since he has no intention of telling Astoria that he _is _in fact a Death Eater.

"Also," Astoria is saying, interrupting his reverie, "rumor has it you have a bit of an ego problem."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning you can be a bit of a cocky, self-absorbed—"

"Okay," he says, smiling despite himself.

"Is that a copy of _Advanced Potion Making_?" she asks, pointing to a book on his desk, another homework assignment he has yet to complete.

"Yeah. But it's a N.E.W.T. level text. You won't need it until sixth year at least."

"Oh, I know," Astoria said. "But Romilda Vane – you know her, Gryffindor, wears too much eyeliner – keeps trying to send love potions to the entire male population of this school and the antidote in _Moste Potente Potions_ had too many ingredients."

"Is that the book you stole from the restricted section?"

Astoria nods. "I know, not exactly the most dangerous book out there, but seriously, you've never seen Blaise Zabini on a love potion. Someone needs to be making an antidote. So, can I borrow the book?"

"Er, sure."

She reaches across him to grab the book but loses her balance. He throws his arms out to keep her from falling on the still-healing wounds from Potter's curse and then suddenly her face is just inches from his.

They're alone in the hospital wing. Astoria is right there. Draco inhales once, twice.

Then there's a creak from the door of Madam Pomfrey's office. Draco isn't supposed to have visitors yet and Madam Pomfrey will have a fit, especially if she catches them in this position. From the look on her face, Astoria draws the same conclusion.

Then she kisses him. Her lips are feather-light against his and it's over as soon as it begins.

Then Astoria bolts away from his bed and towards the hospital wing door.

Draco brings his fingers to his lips.

It's not his first kiss, but Merlin it was different than anything he'd ever experienced before.

**June**

It feels like the world is over. Draco sits by himself in an abandoned fourth floor corridor, casting spells at the cobwebs near the ceiling.

Dumbledore is dead. He was too much of a coward to do it himself, and now the world may as well be over because there's nothing to stop the Dark Lord now – and this thought surprises him, because he's never felt the need to oppose the Dark Lord before today, and he doesn't even know why he would want to.

Dumbledore is dead. The Dark Lord got what he wanted. He won't be happy that it was Snape to do the job, and not Draco, but at least Draco's family should be safe.

He hears crying, and looks up to find Astoria Greengrass. The second she notices him even more tears start to pour down her face. Her eyes are red.

"Dumbledore," she says, as if he doesn't already know. "He's dead."

"I know," he says. His voice sounds hollow. _Tell her who ordered it. Tell her you were supposed to do it, but couldn't_.

He can't.

"There were Death Eaters here," she says. "All over the castle. They think they might've got in through Hogsmeade."

It wasn't Hogsmeade, it was his fault, and he knows it, but he's always been a coward and even now he can't find the courage to tell her.

He finds himself standing, walking towards her, embracing her. She leans her head on his shoulder, but all Draco can think is that this is all his fault.

Astoria stills in his arms, pushes herself away from him so she can study his face.

Then she's kissing him again, passionately, and it's nothing like the chaste kiss they had shared in the Hospital Wing so many weeks ago. They haven't kissed since then, although he's held her hand down the hallway (to Pansy Parkinson's utter disgust) a few times and every so often she'd catch his gaze and smile at him. She has kept him from going over the edge this past month.

Draco pushes her away quickly. She looks up at him, a mix of surprise and anger on her face.

"I'm going to be seventeen in four days, Astoria, and you're still a fourth year—"

"I'm fifteen," she says, "I want this," as though this is about age, but it's not, it's not.

She deserves a good boy, not some coward almost-murderer.

But she's kissing him again, and the rest of the world fades away, and for a while there's no Dark Lord, no Death Eaters, no father in Azkaban, no dead headmaster.

He moves forward until she's backed up against the wall, and his hands are in her hair, and hers are on his chest. Then she reaches for the edge of his shirt and tries to get it over his head – they have to break apart for a split second – but then they're back to kissing and—

She stops, pushes him off of her. She looks horrified.

"Astoria, what—"

She's pointing at his left arm, the one he's kept so carefully concealed all year, even wearing a long-sleeved shirt in June so that no one would see it.

The Dark Mark.

"Astoria…"

She shakes her head. "I can't do this."

"You don't understand. I didn't have a choice."

"You always have a choice." Her tone is cold.

She backs away slowly. Her hair is messed up and her tie is askew, but she doesn't seem to care.

"So what does this mean?" Draco can't help asking.

"I don't know," she says. "I just… I don't know."

He watches her leave.

_Review?_


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